Problem

When working with long ChatGPT responses, I often need to ask a follow-up question about one specific paragraph or section.

Currently, I have to scroll to the bottom of the conversation, write the follow-up question, read the new response, and then scroll back to find where I was in the original answer. If the follow-up creates several additional messages, the main conversation becomes fragmented and difficult to navigate.

Existing conversation branches are useful, but they do not fully solve this problem. They create a separate version of the conversation rather than a small contextual discussion attached to a specific part of a message.

Proposed Feature

Allow users to select a paragraph, sentence, code block, table, image, or section of a ChatGPT response and choose an option such as:

“Ask about this”

This would open a small side conversation in one of the following formats:

  • a floating contextual bubble;

  • a collapsible inline thread;

  • a side panel;

  • or a secondary tab inside the current conversation.

The side conversation would remain anchored to the selected content and would automatically retain the relevant context.

Suggested Behavior

  1. The user selects part of a response.

  2. ChatGPT displays an “Ask about this” action.

  3. A contextual side thread opens without moving the user away from the original position.

  4. The user can ask several follow-up questions inside that thread.

  5. The thread can be collapsed or reopened from the selected fragment.

  6. Closing it returns the user to the exact scroll position in the main conversation.

  7. An optional “Add conclusion to main conversation” action could insert a summary of the side discussion into the primary thread.

Benefits

This feature would:

  • preserve the visual context of the original answer;

  • reduce unnecessary scrolling;

  • prevent secondary questions from cluttering the main conversation;

  • make long technical and educational conversations easier to navigate;

  • improve document review and research workflows;

  • help users explore details without losing the main line of reasoning.

Use Cases

This would be especially useful for:

  • software development and code review;

  • technical explanations;

  • studying and teaching;

  • document analysis;

  • research;

  • legal or administrative work;

  • long-form planning;

  • ChatGPT Work documents and generated artifacts.

In interface terms, this could work similarly to comments or discussion threads attached to specific text in collaborative document editors, but with a full contextual ChatGPT conversation inside each thread.

1 Like